It is time for Zorba to start meditating, and it is time for the people who are meditators not to allow themselves to escape from the world... Only in completion is there bliss. Only in completion have you come home.
Osho

Sunday, 29 December 2013

Healing the heart

Actually the real heart, the energetic heart, cannot be healed, because it cannot be hurt. It is always undisturbed and peaceful.

When we refer to a ‘broken heart’, we are talking about a physical sensation in the body which is caused by certain thoughts – for example, that our partner doesn’t love us any more, or loves someone else instead. It is actually the ego that is hurt, not the heart.

Thoughts like these, and the feelings they provoke, are very painful, and so we armor ourselves as a protection. This armor is like a wall we build up around our heart. We ‘close’ our hearts in the mistaken belief that the heart is the problem. It is not.

Our dreams are the problem. Our ideas that we cling to about how things should be – that is the problem. We had a Hollywood happy-ever-after dream, and it ended. And our ego doesn’t want to accept the fact that our dreams have been shattered. It doesn’t want to face the reality. Have you noticed how the mind goes on feeding the wounds of a ‘broken heart’ by endlessly running the story of what happened to us. Endlessly chewing on the ‘What if’s’. Like a tongue constantly returning to the hole left by a tooth that was removed by the dentist. It just can’t let it go, can it?

That is why it is very difficult to let go completely of the people who we feel have ‘hurt’ us. We either go on carrying an illusion that the love will somehow miraculously be rekindled, that the other will see the light and come back to us, or we carry hate and revenge against them. We may think we have cut them out of our lives, but every time we see them or hear about them, we have an emotional reaction. And despite our best endeavors, they keep coming back into our thoughts whenever we are feeling vulnerable or lonely.

Whether we are waiting for them to come back or have cut them off, either way we are burdened – either way we are not free to find another love. Either way we have put up some kind of wall around our heart.

Hope is a terrible thing… waiting for the impossible to happen eats away not only at our loving feelings and openness, but also at our self-esteem and confidence. And when we make someone into an enemy, it hurts us – it hurts to close ourselves off from our hearts, which is what we do when we block someone out.

The only way to really let someone go, and thus be free to get on with our lives, is with gratitude for what they did give us. Or at least with a focus on appreciating their good qualities, rather than harping on their bad ones. This is not at all easy for the mind, the ego, which would much rather stay with blame and complaint. But it is not difficult for the heart, for the energetic heart.

The heart has the capacity to see the positive, even in someone whom the mind can only see as a monster. That is because the heart doesn’t compare and doesn’t have ideals. It doesn’t have dreams or hopes. It simply sees the present reality, without judging. Judging is a quality of the mind, not the heart, because it requires comparison.

Because the heart is not involved in the stories the mind spins, it can see more clearly. It can see that the other person has been acting unconsciously, even though they may not be aware of it. For their own unconscious reasons, they were unable to give you what you wanted from them. Unlike the mind, or ego, the heart doesn’t take this personally. It understands that that person has their own problems, their own vulnerability and their own limits that make them behave the way they do. And that has nothing to do with you. Their behavior is their way of covering up their own wounds, fears and needs. With that understanding, compassion arises. And with that compassion, you can finally let that person go and find peace for yourself.

It takes tremendous courage to shift from the mind to the heart and have this perspective, but if you are fed up with feeling the walls around your heart, and really want to feel your heart flowing freely again, then you can give this a try.

It is not a matter of forgiveness. If the other person has treated you badly, then it is important to leave the responsibility for that with them, and let them take the consequences. This process is something just for you – to allow you to let go of this situation that has been hanging over you, and get on with your life feeling lighter and unburdened.

The process is not just for healing wounds you are carrying from lovers, but for anyone you are holding grudges against, or judgments about. It may be someone alive or dead, someone present in your life or from the past, someone in your family or someone from your work. It doesn’t matter – as long as we carry grudge against someone, that person goes on haunting us in a way – we give them power over us. We are not free.

This process is about cleaning up our lives and becoming free of these burdens

Do not think that this nirvana is an empty or void state. There is this consciousness, without distinguishing mark, infinite and shining everywhere; it is untouched by the material elements and not subject to any power.

Wise people have gone through a great deal of pain to know the truth directly, for they have understood that such knowledge alone could give them freedom. We gain that knowledge not by reading books or listening to lectures but through direct experience. For direct experience you need to meditate.

Our minds are never quiet; constant scheming, calculating, and worrying produces the incoherent sounds of our internal talking machine. The roots of this universal anxiety are the desire to be something, to become somebody, to claim that I am somebody, and the accompanying fear of the failure of this claim.

“How do I free myself from the belief that I am the operator? How do I empty my self of self-will in order that ‘Thy will be done’? How can I know what is my will and what is Thy will? How can I empty myself of myself and become, in Saint Francis’s words, a perfect ‘instrument of Thy peace’?” These questions are answered in meditation when we practice it sincerely, systematically, and with sustained enthusiasm. The answers do not come through voices or visions, but through slow, steady growth in discrimination and detachment. As old desires lose their power to drive us, veil after veil falls away from our eyes, leaving our vision calm and clear, able to take in the whole where before we saw only our own small corner.

Eknath Easwaran, Climbing the Blue Mountain: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey

Sunday, 15 December 2013

There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life.

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.

Friday, 13 December 2013

Our Mind-essence is originally perfect and bright. The reason that we cannot attain instantaneous enlightenment and partake of immediate enjoyment is the veiling of the Mind by the klesa of covetousnes, hatred, stupidity, and cupidity during the innumerable kalpas in the past. It is therefore necessary to practice gradual cultivation.

The Ch'an master Kuei-shan teaches that if a student can attain sudden enlightenment, he has only to apply his enlightenment to the purification of the manifested karmas and the flowing consciousness. This is called "cultivation." There is no other kind of cultivation.

If the student seeks only sudden enlightenment and stops there, thinking that there is no function or application, then the karmic force will go underground and erupt when conditions permit. Gradually, the mind will become a demonic realm.

Tuesday, 10 December 2013

There was a king, who, one day, entering his royal court, observed one person who among all those present, was not bowing down before him. Unnerved by the impudent act of this stranger in the hall, the king called out: “How dare you not bow down before me! Only God does not bow down before me, and there is nothing greater than God. Who then are you?” The tattered stranger answered with a smile, “I am that nothing.”

You too put your best foot forward. If you do not wish to, then follow your fantasies. But if you prefer the secrets of the love of your soul you will sacrifice everything. You will lose what you consider valuable, but you will soon hear the sacramental word “Enter.”

Who do you think I am? A drunkard? A love-sick fool, a slave of my senses, made senseless by desire? Understand: I have risen above all that, I am the King of Love in majesty. My soul is purified from the darkness of lust, my longing purged of low desire, my mind free from shame. I have broken the teeming bazaar of the senses in my body. Love is the essence of my being. Love is fire and I am wood burnt by the flame. Love has moved in and adorned the house, my self tied up its bundle and left. You imagine that you see me, but I no longer exist: what remains is the Beloved….

“As if the sorrows and stupidities of the world could overwhelm me now that I realize what we all are. I wish everyone could realize this, but there is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun.”